UDC

94(430).086

DOI

10.17238/issn2227-6564.2019.5.43

Authors

Boris L. Khavkin
Russian State University for the Humanities; Miusskaya ploshchad’ 6, Moscow, 125993, Russian Federation; e-mail: novistor@mail.ru

Abstract

Based on the documents in the case of Major Joachim Kuhn, one of the conspirators against Adolf Hitler, kept in the Central Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation and published by the author of this study, the article examines the plot of a group of German military men and politicians aimed to overthrow Hitler and withdraw Germany from the war. At the end of September 1944, handwritten testimony by Joachim Kuhn was lying on the table of Chairman of the State Defence Committee and Supreme Commander of the Red Army Joseph Stalin. Thus, he was the first among the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition to receive detailed information about the plotted assassination. Major Joachim Kuhn was sentenced to death in the Third Reich for participating in the conspiracy. Noteworthy, in the Soviet Union he was found guilty of “preparing and waging an aggressive war against the USSR”. On October 17, 1951 the Special Meeting at the USSR Ministry of State Security sentenced Joachim Kuhn to 25 years in prison. As late as on December 23, 1998 the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation acquitted Joachim Kuhn “for absence of crime in his actions”. As a consequence, the documents in Kuhn’s case were declassified and made available to historians.

Keywords

anti-Hitler resistance, anti-Hitler plot, German military conspiracy against Hitler, Joachim Kuhn, Klaus von Stauffenberg, Helmut Stief, Heinrich von Einsiedel

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